O’Reilly, Ousted

Rupert Murdoch outside the News Corporation building after the resignation of Roger Ailes.CreditKevin Hagen/Getty Images

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Rupert Murdoch tried to make his firing of Bill O’Reilly seem as if it were based on morality. In a letter to Fox News employees (obtained by CNN’s Brian Stelter), Murdoch wrote that “we want to underscore our consistent commitment to fostering a work environment built on the values of trust and respect.”

This claim is false, and Murdoch’s use of “consistent” is especially rich. O’Reilly’s pattern of harassing women has been clear for more than a decade. Megan Garber of The Atlantic has a useful review — incomplete, no doubt — of his behavior.

A sudden onset of morality didn’t bring down O’Reilly after all of these years. Two other forces did instead.

First, a new wave of attention on his behavior — kicked off by a New York Times investigation — created risks for the Fox brand. Advertisers were fleeing. Women inside the network were furious. British regulators were on the verge of making a multibillion-dollar decision about a different part of Murdoch’s empire, which involved evaluating whether the family was a “fit and proper” manager, as Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine noted.

Second, the younger generation of Murdochs — particularly James and Lachlan, two of Rupert’s sons — may take a different view of boorishness and abuse than Rupert Murdoch does. Until almost the end, the patriarch was in O’Reilly’s corner, Sherman reported. The “values of trust and respect” somehow weren’t strong enough to prevent Murdoch from protecting O’Reilly all these years.

But if O’Reilly’s firing wasn’t based on morals, it is still a victory for morality. A man who spent years abusing people less wealthy and powerful than him has lost his large public stage, in a very public way. His legacy — like that of his old boss, Roger Ailes — will always involve his ugly abusiveness.